The long list of unique "firsts" which have catapulted Disneyland to the top of vacationers lists throughout America will grow even longer and more distinctive in mid-June when Walt Disney unveils Nature's Wonderland, a new $1.8 million attraction. Beaver Valley, Rear Country, Old Unfaithful Geyser, the Living Desert, Graveyard of the Dinosaurs--these and many more areas filled with performing ...

Who ever heard of a mule skinner with blonde hair, blue eyes, pretty smile and peaches-and-cream complexion? Well, that's the way they grow them in Disneyland. And this year, Carol Spaeth, who broke the all-male mule skinner tradition at the "Magic Kingdom" five years ago, has opened up still another man-size job for the girls by becoming the Park's first female surrey driver. Disneyland has ...

Over 300 carrier boys from The News will visit Disneyland on March 18 as a reward for exceptional effort in their jobs. The young men will see all the sights of the world-famous center in Anaheim, with particular emphasis on the Frontierland area of the park. Plan Visit to "Wonderland" Although Frontierland is only one of the park's five major "lands," many youngsters have named it their ...

It was the '60s, a decade of change. And just like society, Disneyland would change too - in dramatic fashion. 1960 Just like previous years, Walt Disney was constantly tinkering with Disneyland as the decade started. The first year of the decade, he added more scenes to the Rainbow Ridge Mine Train, and changed its name to the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland. The mules got a new name, ...

The seventies at Disneyland started with an invasion, then went into space, and ended with a wild ride in the frontier. Unfortunately for Disneyland, the riots that had been happening in cities across America during the latter half of the sixties and some of the protesters turned their attention to Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom. On Aug. 6, 1970, the Yippies (an offshoot of the hippies of the sixties) ...

If it was in the West, it's here. The Mark Twain Riverboat docks at the aptly named Mark Twain Landing in Frontierland. The first train ride, apart from the Disneyland Railroad, was the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland, opening in 1960; the Mine Train closed in 1977, and Big Thunder Mountain opened two years later. The two rides could not be more different. The Mine Train was a slow, relaxing ride ...

Not so very long ago, the mighty Mississippi was covered with rafts, keel boats, barges, and a variety of floating paraphernalia. These crafts adorned the river everyday, but the only vessels that made the muddy waters shine were the "Queens of the River," the majestic steamboats with pearly decks that were crowned with two ebony smokestacks Critics said that steamboats were nothing more than, ...

The place is surrounded by a berm, a high barrow of earth, that insulates it from the external world. There is a single gateway where admission is charged. This, the land of Disney, is more secure than ancient Troy. No Trojan horse will get into Disneyland. Guards at the main gate closely scrutinize all who enter. Not even an unseemly teenager will get past them, much less a Trojan horse. Disneyland is ...

Part of the magic of the Magic Kingdom, of course, is that despite the slings and arrows peppering the outside world, it somehow remains as seemingly immutable as one of Aristotle's First Causes, or Walt's immortal mouse, whose 60th birthday the park-itself pushing a healthy 33-is celebrating this year from March 19 through September 8 with a new Mickey at the Movies Parade. However, as any Disneycologist ...

When I read of the battles being waged by soulless egomaniacs for control of the Disney entertainment empire, my mind instinctively retreats to the pre-Beatles 1960s when there was just kindly old Walt and his Wonderful World of Color enchanting my family on a black-and-white TV screen on Sunday nights in Ashland, Ohio. Walt Disney was a god, conversant in the dialects of ducks and mice, and if ...

A summer vacation with pay. . . traveling down the rivers of America into the past . . . the exotic and the whimsical . . . this was my summer travel adventure. Dozens of school teachers and college students shared this unusual tour, yet none of us traveled more than 50 miles. All of us met thousands of people from nearly every corner of the earth. We were part of the newest of Americana, Disneyland, ...

It was sometime in the 1940s, and a young father sat on an amusement park bench, licking a Popsicle and feeling slightly disgruntled. While his two daughters rode the merry-go-round, he waited restlessly, wondering why there was no amusement park that was equally "amusing" for children and adults. Had this been anyone else, the thought might have disappeared with the last slurps of the Popsicle. ...

In the third decade of this century America produced a young man of genius. He drew pictures with pen and ink and wash. Like other geniuses, such as Michelangelo, Leonardo and Bernini, he had a mechanical turn of mind; and, by means of all sorts of devices, he made his drawings into motion pictures which were works of art. He drew animals to perfection. With care and his knowledge of mechanics he made ...

It is a place of improbable dreams, a 65-acre world drifted over with pixie dust. It is a place where Tinker Bell and Mary Poppins soar matter-of-factly through the evening sky, where Tom Sawyer plies his raft on the muddy Mississippi and the Lost Continent of Atlantis is cheek by jowl with the moon. It is, of course, Disneyland-Walt Disney's incredible pearl in the neon ugliness of Anaheim, Calif. As ...

Gardening enthusiasts who visit Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., where adults outnumber youngsters four to one, are as fascinated by the wide variety of appropriate landscape plantings and colorful gardens as they are by the 50 or more major amusement attractions in this multi-million dollar center. These horticultural period plantings include a tree-bordered Main Street of the early 1900's; ...

Imagine it's 200 years ago and you're a passenger on a small boat picking its way carefully along a dark and treacherous stretch of coastline on the Spanish Main. Suddenly pandemonium breaks loose. The air resounds with the roar of cannons and the crack of muskets. A band of pirates is attacking a town and you're right in the middle! The rogues are everywhere-taunting the town council, auctioning off the ...

While Disneyland is technically and geographically not even in Los Angeles County, it has been a big part of the L.A. lifestyle dating back to the 1950s. A fine pictorial map created by Sam McKim in 1968 shows the Magic Kingdom during a year when the park as most vintage Angelenos know it was in place and making indelible memories. Baby Boomers can mark stages of their lives by visits to Disneyland, ...

As Disneyland celebrates the 60th anniversary of the E-ticket, it seems like a good time to look back at the rides that earned that distinction at the Anaheim theme park. But what are the E-ticket rides of Disneyland? Naming them all is not as simple as you might think. There were 23 E-ticket attractions during the ticket book era that stretched from 1955 to 1982, according to ...

It was "Gay Paree" they wrote about in the words to that popular World War I song. But it's a horse of another color in 1960 ... to the horses of Disneyland, that is. If word ever reaches the stables of America about cousin horse's job at Disneyland, farmers and ranchers may be asking the same question all over again. They may be horse-laughed right into that new 60-horse-power Ford ...